Some days, I approach work with great joy and anticipation. It’s nice to get paid for something you enjoy doing and feel like you do well. But, today was not such a day; it was long, heavy, discouraging and confusing, leaving me wondering if I am even doing what God wants me to do, let alone finding any eternal significance in the bizarre data, office politics and the piles of self-reproducing paper on my desk.
I long to clearly understand and then do what God wants me to and to do it in such a way that it has eternal significance. That being said, I never actually thought I was going to cure Parkinson’s disease, even though I surely would like to. I just thought that since I had to work for a living anyway, that perhaps, somewhere in the mix, I might contribute something useful that would help a patient have a better quality of life or slow his disease progress; perhaps I might provide some small piece of knowledge that would spark a idea in a brighter mind than mine and that person would take it and run the ball all the way to the finish line. Right now, I feel more like it’s 4th down and 100 yards to go because I’m sitting in my own end zone in a heap with a dozen people on top – some of them my own. Clearly, it wasn’t a “good” day in my book.
But, I am forced to wonder if perhaps this is just what God intended. It takes little faith to keep going when the going is easy, the grants are rolling in and the manuscripts rolling out – but now, it’s the one foot in front of another kind of faith just to go in every day and try to sort out what’s on top of my desk to figure out what the “next thing” that need to be done even is. I was glad for the article “To Everything There is a Season” on The High Calling of our Daily Work. It reminds me that there are seasons and I’m just in the middle of one. Sometimes it takes a really long winter to recognize and appreciate spring.
Enjoy the High Calling website – it’s user friendly and has lots of encouraging articles if you, like me, are wondering if what you do really makes a difference to anyone, including God. You might also find encouragement at the following sites as we progress through a Blog tour to launch the new High Calling web site!
Gordon Atkinson, L. L. Barkat, Gina Conroy, Craver VII, CREEations, Milton Brasher-Cunningham, Mary DeMuth, Karl Edwards, Emdashery, Every Square Inch, Green Inventions, Amy Goodyear, Marcus Goodyear, Al Hsu, Jennwith2ns, Charles Foster Johnson, Mike McLoughlin, Eve Nielsen, Naked Pastor, Ramblin Dan, Charity Singleton, Stacy, Camy Tang, Writer… Interrupted
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
ah, the faith season... I have surely been there (and, I suppose, may come round to it again sometime)
Halfmom, great post. And it's a good reminder why the mission of TheHighCalling.org is to encourage people in their daily work.
Every job has days, sometimes weeks and months, like you describe. Even the job of running a website about encouraging people in their jobs! Weird, huh? But sometimes even my job feels like it stinks. Sometimes I have really bad days. (And I really really love my job.)
At those times, I have to remind myself just to keep up "the one foot in front of another kind of faith."
PS. Since you are a research scientist you might really enjoy our interview with Dr. John Medina.
PPS. I have to say that I'm getting annoyed at finding L.L.'s name ahead of mine on every single post. That woman is a commenting machine! : )
I like your sheep story!
Have a good weekend!
i have enjoyed reading everyone's posts about this topic. it was interesting to read yours, especially, and find out your work is related to parkinson's disease. my grandmother had parkinson's, and it was a devastating thing to watch.
and i agree about having seasons and the faith thing. that could be applied to all aspects of life.....
Post a Comment